Banknotes Go Electronic To Outwit Counterfeiters 441
suraj.sun writes "Modern banknotes contain up to 50 anti-counterfeiting features, but adding electronic circuits programmed to confirm the note's authenticity is perhaps the ultimate deterrent, and would also help to simplify banknote tracking. From the article: 'A team of German and Japanese researchers created arrays of thin-film transistors (TFTs) by carefully depositing gold, aluminum oxide and organic molecules directly onto the notes through a patterned mask, building up the TFTs layer by layer. The result is an undamaged banknote containing around 100 organic TFTs, each of which is less than 250 nanometres thick and can be operated with voltages of just 3V. Such small voltages could be transmitted wirelessly by an external reader, such as the kind that communicates with the RFID tags found on many products.'"
Go electronic! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do we still carry money anyway?
Re:Go electronic! (Score:4, Informative)
How else are you going to tip your stripper?
Re:Go electronic! (Score:5, Funny)
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I understand you've never been to Thailand, Spain or Brazil.... They accept credit cards and very generic stuff appears in your bill.
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Hey now, that is a job for Al Gore.
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I do because I don't like part of the credit card companies business model, and would rather pay cash when possible.
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I know at least one place where the guy comes in a motorcycle to deliver you cocaine, and accepts credit card. Appears on the bill as pizza.
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I know at least one place where the guy comes in a motorcycle to deliver you cocaine, and accepts credit card. Appears on the bill as pizza.
Well, sure, cocaine. But not crack. As Whitney Houston said, "Crack is a poor person's drug."
Convenience in some situations (Score:3)
Part of the problem, particularly in the US, is there isn't a good person-to-person electronic payment system that is easy to use, secure, and low cost. So let's say you pay for lunch on your credit card, how do I pay you back? Paypal requires we both have accounts, go to a computer, transfer, incur a fee, wait, and so on. Unless you happen to be a business owner you yourself don't accept credit cards. So cash is the only easy way.
Can also apply to businesses. Like when I had a local plumber come out to fix
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We have that too, it’s called “personal check”... though it does have the drawback of requiring you to trust that they actually have that much money in the account, and the check clears.
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Re:Convenience in some situations (Score:4, Funny)
Paper? What sort of backward state still uses paper banknotes? :-)
In Australia plastic or 'polymer' notes last longer and are harder to forge.
Re:Go electronic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we still carry money anyway?
Primarily so we can give it to who we want in the amounts we want, and we don't require Visa/Mastercard/Government/Paypal approving of the entity you are transacting with.
Essentially it's actually an important piece of protecting our freedom.
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So...you want to carry a government document...to prove you're free.
Got it.
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I pay in chickens.
Re:Go electronic! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because then it'd be called a politician.
Re:Go electronic! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's still a form of stored value that can be transacted between 2 parties without government interference (if the transfer is done physically). Can't say the same for Visa/Mastercard/Paypal/Bank of America.
Re:Go electronic! (Score:4, Insightful)
Cash transactions are not to avoid reporting income. It's to buy what I want from who I want without anybody snooping into the details, government or otherwise.
Re:Go electronic! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Your quip is clever and funny, but to be serious for a second it is important to realise that government a priori does not automatically mean "nonfree" however much the popular rhetoric says so. For example the existance of maintained public roads increases your freedom of movement. A putatively impartial judiciary that enforces contract increases your freedom of commerce. A public agency that hunts down murderers increases your freedom unless you're a murderer etc etc.
OK OK, that being said we can start to argue about the dividing line in enabling and restrictive freedoms, Leviathan, 8000 years of political philosophy, abuse of power etc. But the point remains: people form and participate in/with governments because they feel they will be more free with them than without them. And people are fallible....quite fallible.
(and for the record this cash tracking is a horrible idea)
Re:Go electronic! (Score:5, Insightful)
"...Essentially it's actually an important piece of protecting our freedom..."
Was. (if this idiocy is implemented)
The article basically describes RFID tech capable of being built into money. These RFIDs can be read at any point-of-sale cash register. No? Give the government a year or so, as this is the real purpose of all of this--tracking every fucking dollar spent (not to mention the person doing the spending).
As with any RFID system, use your microwave oven liberally. 5 seconds is usually enough. If enough people do this, the whole scheme falls apart as constant "counterfeits" will be a deterrent to doing business and people won't trust the RFID pass/fail determintation. Besides, what happens if your hundred-dollar bill RFID malfunctions (from, say, being crumpled up in a pocket while going through the washer?) and no longer communicates? Are you out a hundred bucks? Will the clerk waiting for you to pay for a full shopping cart of groceries care?
It isn't a collar unless you let them put it on you.
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These RFIDs can be read at any point-of-sale cash register. No? Give the government a year or so
Someday, but a year? Not even close. There are plenty of retailers still using pre-broadband POS systems. Eventually they all get swapped out, but a year is optimistic (or pessimistic given your POV) even for the ones that go cutting edge. This stuff moves slowwwwwwwwwwwwly.
Re:Go electronic! (Score:4, Interesting)
Was. (if this idiocy is implemented)
The article basically describes RFID tech capable of being built into money. These RFIDs can be read at any point-of-sale cash register. No? Give the government a year or so, as this is the real purpose of all of this--tracking every fucking dollar spent (not to mention the person doing the spending).
As with any RFID system, use your microwave oven liberally. 5 seconds is usually enough. If enough people do this, the whole scheme falls apart as constant "counterfeits" will be a deterrent to doing business and people won't trust the RFID pass/fail determintation. Besides, what happens if your hundred-dollar bill RFID malfunctions (from, say, being crumpled up in a pocket while going through the washer?) and no longer communicates? Are you out a hundred bucks? Will the clerk waiting for you to pay for a full shopping cart of groceries care?
It isn't a collar unless you let them put it on you.
As a christian, stories about tracking purchases are very interesting to me. End-time prophecies say that we'll eventually end up with a one-world cashless financial system where the government can approve or deny any transaction in real-time. Say something bad about the government? Associate with the wrong people? Refuse to take this mark that says you agree to worship the mandated one-world religion instead of whoever you want? No transaction for you... and the police will be there in a moment. Please remain calm.
Just 30 years ago, none of us thought this would be in our lifetimes. After all, who could imagine stringing together 1,000,000 apple 2Es over phone lines to make this work? Now? I think I could design the system myself. We're not supposed to set dates. But at least this part of the puzzle can happen pretty much right now.
Ordinarily, I'd think about this stuff and feel a sense of dread. But I'll be gone when all this happens. It's you non-christians who get to deal with that mess. ;-)
Re:Go electronic! (Score:4, Insightful)
End-time prophecies say that we'll eventually end up with a one-world cashless financial system where the government can approve or deny any transaction in real-time.
Not without a lot of baseless guesswork, they don't.
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It (the beast/the antichrist together with the false prophet) also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
Can you explain how this equates to a "one-world cashless financial system where the government can approve or deny any transaction in real-time"? It would seem to me that a much more trivial interpretation would be a law enacted such that no-one can trade with people not bearing the "mark".
You'll find that christians will most likely happily go to their death before agreeing to an implanted RFID (or similar) chip used to facilitate buying and selling.
The prophecy quite specifically talks about a mark on the right hand or on the forehead. It would seem that implanting an RFID chip into the left hand should not pose any problem to Christians.
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You can buy and sell things so long as you can barter with someone. Making the currency electronic and requiring implanted RFID devices to make transactions will make one's life difficult, but it won't close the barter loophole - and, as in any case of regulation, a shadow economy would inevitably arise, with its own currency (likely gold and other precious metals and stones). So you'd still need a law either way.
Yeah, this is the consensus. That christians will have to find other ways to get what they need. I suspect it will be a lot like nazi germany. There were some non-jewish germans who helped the jews. I think a black market will be a lot harder with a modern surveillance society, but certainly not impossible. The bible clearly says that there will be christians who make it all the way through the tribulation alive. This means 3.5 years on the run. They must be eating something, even if it's been provid
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As a christian, stories about tracking purchases are very interesting to me. End-time prophecies say that we'll eventually end up with a one-world cashless financial system where the government can approve or deny any transaction in real-time. Say something bad about the government? [snip snip] It's you non-christians who get to deal with that mess. ;-)
When you talk about profecy, please provide a reference.
Ah, "one-world cashless financial system" cannot be found in the Bible, you say? Come on, "mark of the Beast" is not coming close to describing cash or tracking devices. The text pretty much describes a *tatoo worn on the forehead*.
Stop "interpreting" texts by inserting meanings they do not have. That is a big source of man-created wars and strife, which is NOT christian (example: cusades, jihad, Al-Quaeda, inquisition).
Moreover, a "one-world curren
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MasterCard and Visa charge a significant service fee to every merchant that accepts them. This in fact raises the cost of goods by several percent. Of course the trade off is that money can move around easily and quickly which would have a positive effect on the cost of the good.
And in some cases more safely. That's why some merchants are actually quite happy with credit card transactions - smaller amounts of cash "just waiting" to be stolen/lost.
However, just because the card companies have the power to skim money off every transaction doesn't make it right. Consider for a moment, a percentage taken from *every* transaction made. What kind of effect on the economy would that have? And this cut isn't like taxes that pay for roads and schools. The goal is to make billions for just a few people. (I haven't even gotten to interest rates, fees, or the many other ways to squeeze money out of a consumer.)
So what if the Government undercut them? Visa and Mastercard will be very unhappy of course but that might be a feature not a flaw :).
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What I've been wondering (not that I'd hope to see it implemented) is why there are no bar codes in banknotes. Wouldn't that be a relatively cheap and low-tech way to enable rather widespread tracking?
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Because some people recognize that once we go completely electronic, that the government will have you by the balls. Kiss any semblance of a free country goodbye.
Being a Restaurateur in Germany used to be a fairly lucrative thing, even for a mom and pop operation - especially for a small operation. But fairly recently, if you operate a restaurant there, you have to have you cash register hooked up right to their version of the IRS. Automatic transfers taxes too and the
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Re:Go electronic! (Score:4, Funny)
Why do we still carry money anyway?
Because when you pay people like me.
I don't accept checks, money orders, paypal transactions, nor do I accept credit/debit cards.
I do accept cash. United States Dollars, to be exact.
What do I do?
I fix your computer. I'm the guy, who makes house calls, to fix whatever the fuck you, or someone else did to mess up your computer.
Sure, you can go to the geek squad, or pay some "professional" place to do it. chances are, they won't fix it correctly, charge you way more then I do, and don't do house calls. Not to mention they might report something you have on your computer to some government agency. You didn't know the pics of your kids in the bathtub is considered child porn? That would suck to find out on the way to jail.
Or you can call me up, see when i'm free, and get your shit fixed correctly the first time. I also do the barter system, but that's mostly for weed dealers. Oh, and not only do I have better things to do then poke around your harddrive for whatever you have, I could care less what you have on your computer. Not my business, and your paying me cash to keep it not my business.
Re:Go electronic! (Score:5, Interesting)
Cash = Anonymity.
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So the government can't take all your money instantly-- without due process, of course.
That being said, they're collectively confiscating all of our wealth via inflation.
RE: Go electronic! (Score:5, Insightful)
For anonymous transactions. This puts that concept at risk.
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Why do you need to make anonymous transactions?
Ohhhh. You mean illegal transactions.
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That goes both ways. Some businesses take plastic but not cash. Almost no businesses take pennies for anything more than a dollar transaction, if that.
Pedantry aside, I’ve never had a problem managing to pay for something in cash, apart from the odd vending machine that wouldn’t take my dollar bills or the payments which were too large for me to comfortably carry that much cash (in which case I used a cashier’s check, which is equivalent to cash anyway).
And I use my credit card for purchases of a few dollars and cents, too, so I’m well aware of the conveniences of plastic. But don’t act like the only reason anyone would need
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Unless your purpose is illegal, you really have no economically realistic excuse for keeping cash around.
Here’s a nickel, kid. Go buy yourself a clue.
Oh wait, that’s cash. It’d probably be illegal.
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Why do you need to make anonymous transactions?
Ohhhh. You mean illegal transactions.
Do you mean illegal now, or illegal later? How can I know what will be illegal later, and thus protect myself now?
You can understand why certain ethnic groups in Germany might be nervous at the idea of providing a financial record of all menorahs ever sold, even if at this point they are certainly currently legal. Who benefits from that kind of record? The people or the state?
Same story different country and decade with ammo, alcohol, tobacco, certain firearm components, jtag smart card interfaces, gold
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First, that rulling was political horseshit.
In other words, you’re right, and anybody who says otherwise, including the Supreme Court, is wrong. Why am I not surprised...
Future courts will read the Constitution again and realize that Roberts et al were in on the fix, and will reverse it.
Keep dreaming, troll.
Second, That's how the law works. Law enforcement is beholden to the laws that are in force, not to your interpretation of the constitution. When the law is in force, law enforcement enforces that law. When the law gets struck down, they stop.
You basically just completely contradicted your initial claim, which was that nobody needs to worry about an unconstitutional law (like an ex post facto law) ever being passed and enforced.
Now you’re claiming that unconstitutional laws can and will be passed and enforced until they get struck down, which was my point all along.
Go troll someone else.
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Now here's an interesting thought--bear with me here--what if the serial number were generated as the public key to a private key hidden in the electronics in the note? That way, the authenticity could be verified easily, and, as a bonus, individual bills could be used as crypto keys.
You need something more complicated to prevent "double spending"/multiple copies being made, and simply creating your own pub/priv pairs.
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Well, to spend would require passing the token (read: handing over the bill) to the new owner.
Key generation by private individuals could be prevented through custom exotic machine architecture without which the algorithms don't work--say, quantum-processed base-(largeprime) calculations. It wouldn't last forever, of course; doubtless, someone would be able to eventually crack the base-2305843009213693951 calculations that generate the keys, but by that time the new series of bills would be out ;-p
Well, if you put the private key in the US mint and use it as an oracle, all you need to do is make a million copies of the obviously well known pub key off any random note.
If you put the private key in some kind of tamper proof smartcard oracle inside the note, all you need is a fake oracle that always says its public key is real.
You can't distribute the private key to every verification terminal in known space, someone will put it on wikileaks and then, trillion digit bases or not, it'll be all over tee s
"Ultimate" Deterrent? (Score:3, Insightful)
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The only "Ultimate" deterrent would be to make it impossible to produce the currency for less than the value of the currency.
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And that's why everyone hates pennies.
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The only "Ultimate" deterrent would be to make it impossible to produce the currency for less than the value of the currency.
As long as the existence of the currency over the lifetime of the physical object generates more tax value by being used, than it cost to make, a govt will run a profit if they own the mint. If it costs $21 to make a $20, thats perfectly OK if the bill is so durable that each 5% sales tax and 30% income tax adds up to $22 of revenue from that physical artifact.
Also there is no deterrent from a wealthy enough foreign power minting bills just to mess with you. Kind of like you don't need to make a profit on
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It's hard for me to imagine any security measure economical enough to implement in $20 bills could not be replicated by a really well-funded forger, such as a foreign intelligence agency. .
Inflation.
Security vulnerabilities printed onto banknotes (Score:2)
What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
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Oh, and no use carrying a "fake" wallet with low bills. They'll scan you just to make sure they got everything once again after you hand over the wallet.
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At close range, getting out a gun is useless. Even Miyomoto Musashi said guns and bows were supreme weapons on the battlefield ... until you're within sword clashing distance. You can't turn fast enough to point the tip of a sword at an attacker; but you can bring the broad side up to block the other sword. Similarly, if you're within stabbing range it's too late to "get out my gun." If you already have a gun pointed at you, it's also well into too late.
The threat model for carrying a gun is when you
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Maybe a quick toasting in a microwave oven would help. It's probably easier than carrying your cash in tin foil. What else is there? The dollar coin? Maybe they'll soon make $20 or $50 coins.
Gotta have change for the parking meter...
The sniffing for high value idea has been used before. I read that some sniffed for wireless MAC strings with an Apple vendor ID as the first half of the address to target places to break into.
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Much safer to use that type of hardware to upgrade the firmware on a $1 up to $20, then visit the automated checkout lanes.
Honestly, I sometimes wonder how automated checkout lanes stay in business. Often they dont. But you gotta wonder what kind of stuff appears in their bill receptors.
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What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
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RFID Money ?! Get your asbestos undies (Score:3)
Assuming it does and gets adopted by countries, it'll be time for the shielded wallets that are RFID proof.
I figure a flame war will start over this somewhere
Here are just a few of those sites you can get those shielded wallets from for the more paranoid amongst you : )
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/security/8cdd/
http://www.idstronghold.com/
http://www.tamperseal.com/rfid-blocking-leather-wallet-p-332.html
http://rfidwallet.org/
And then wikileaks would ... (Score:2)
bitcoin (Score:2)
You should check out Bitcoins. http://www.bitcoin.org/ [bitcoin.org] The mathematics behind it are genius. I wander how long it will take before governments try to shut it down.
Washing machine defeats security (Score:3)
That's okay (Score:2)
This is nothing a few seconds in the microwave won't fix.
Of course, I had to use a hammer to fix my passport's problem.
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Every transaction involves debt. The definition of the word even says so. When you buy something you owe a debt to the retailer when they agree to the transaction.
"Something owed, such as money, goods, or services."
"simplification" ??? (Score:3)
At the moment, cash is basically the only (mostly) anonymous means of payment available. Since when is less anonymous is a good idea?
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Do we really want to
At the moment, cash is basically the only (mostly) anonymous means of payment available. Since when is less anonymous is a good idea?
When you're a government agency, or corporation. Remember, corporations control the (U.S.) government, and the government controls the money. Sure, any group can create its own form of currency, and some communities/municipalities have done just that. Just try to exchange that local currency for anything outside of town, however, and it all falls apart.
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Do we really want to
At the moment, cash is basically the only (mostly) anonymous means of payment available. Since when is less anonymous is a good idea?
Since we decided that this whole freedom thing that those hippies who founded this nation so adored was over rated. And then we decided to try out a fascist police state and corporate kleptocracy run by a class of people who have the right to be given more money, not for work, but because they already have a lot of money.
Where's George? (Score:3)
seriously though, once cash is traceable, it ceases to be useful. unless they only use it on very large bills and they reinstate the higher denomination bills [wikipedia.org]
Anti-counterfeiting prior art (Score:2)
Why not just use Polymer notes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Poorer countries such as Nicaragua, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Kuwait use them, so why have other countries not caught up?
This isn't just the US, but the EU and UK as well. Why stick to paper when much more advanced tech has been around for over 20 years and is being used by third world countries?
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>Poorer countries such as Nicaragua, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Kuwait use them,
Yes, but you neglect to mention that Nigeria and Bangladesh have only 10 approx. $10,000US-equivalent notes in circulation, and Nicaragua has only one of them, which constitutes its entire national reserve and is now, due to some unfortunate incidents including the intervention of a CIA stripp-- er, agent-- in the hands of a drug cartel-- in Mexico. Kuwait, finally, is *not* a poorer nation, but considers oil to be a m
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Because certain segments of the government understand that paper money is based on an illusion (although the illusion of value doesn't mean they're valueless, just that it's a value held in an illusion and not in your hand) and if you change it too much too fast people start to beleive the haze is falling away from their eyes, which can have destabilizing effects as they start to refuse the paper money, stripping away its ability to carry the value it actually has.
(This isn't the problem pennies have. The
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a huge portion of people using the notes didn't like the way they felt, therefore the stopped using them. it wasn't because there were sturdier and easier to distinguish (colour coded)
Americans are very stubborn and slow to take things up, so don't expect too many changed with their currency, i bet they would invest billions in making their money feel the same but change everything else, great 'money management' the
There's a really easy solution to that problem (Score:3)
Don't make it optional. When you stop printing paper bills in favor of polymer, and remove all the paper bills from circulation as they return to banks (same process that happens now with existing bills), people will use them.
And I have approximately zero sympathy for the argument that we should give up on a solution that's more economical and harder to counterfeit because "people don't like the way they feel".
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Why stick to paper when much more advanced tech has been around for over 20 years and is being used by third world countries?
It seems to me that, provided the "old" currency formats continue to be acceptable payment (think twenty-year-old $20 USD bill), why bother counterfeiting the new styles? Just continue to counterfeit the older style bills.
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Typically when you change the banknotes, you gradually phase out the old ones - first they are legal tender, then they can be accepted or not at merchant's discretion, then they can only be exchanged at a bank, and finally they're just paper.
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Those are also called paper - if it's made out of pressed fibers, it's paper. And, indeed, apparently bank notes are usually made of cotton paper.
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eh? I've never had ink smearing off my Australian banknotes, no matter how new or old. It's as flexible and as thin as paper, and far less tear-prone. I haven't had a bank note "deteriorate" on me, and the oldest ones I've seen have the same kind of fading you might see on a paper note. It even has a translucent "window" as a security device, or so they tell us. They're damnably hard to counterfiet, though we shouldn't be under the illusion that it would be impossble.
Australia replaced its whole active mone
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Inks smear right off. The solution is to laminate, then it turns out they delaminate. The solution to that is to essentially plastic weld two thin layers together into one piece of clear plastic. Then they're thick enough to crack. They're not as indestructible as you claim.
This is pure BS. I have notes from over 10 years ago that are still in ace condition. You have no idea of that which you speak.
Yes (Score:2)
...but adding electronic circuits programmed to confirm the note's authenticity is perhaps the ultimate deterrent...
Because everyone knows it's impossible to spoof electronics.
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And I'm sure that nobody would ever consider that there are about a hundred individual circuits in each newly minted bill, but that a counterfeit note would need only a few of those to pass as genuine.
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Putting the word "perhaps" in the news makes the article a spoof off journalism.
Zimbabwe solved the counterfeiting problem... (Score:2)
Noone tries to counterfeit Zimbabwean dollars anymore, because counterfeit money would actually be more valuable than real ZWD...
The Interrogation (Score:4, Informative)
"No, sir, I cannot. From 5:00 p.m. until 5:58 p.m. I was fucking your mother in the alley by the ATM. I can't count it as an alibi because she'll deny it, but if you'll examine her anus you'll find some compelling evidence. Alternatively, take your suspicion and go away."
And then I'll pray the L.A.-style cop beating will be caught on cell phone.
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The bouillon ownership will be banned like it was pre-1975.
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if they have gold in them now this little bit of otherwise worthless paper actually has a minuscule bit of value
I’ve heard they already contain measurable levels of cocaine.